The Cisco UCS M4308 modular chassis is a highly dense modular power efficient platform for parallelized workloads offering optimal performance per Watt large number of processor cores per rack unit with policy based provisioning automation and management.

This new offering extends the capabilities of Cisco's Unified Computing Syst em portfolio in a 2U form factor with up to eight slots in the front of the chassis that accommodate up to eight single-wide cartridges. The chassis architecture supports a variety of cartridges such as compute storage or any other special function cartridge. Any of the 8 slots can support compute server modules. In addition there are three special slots that can accommodate other functions. For example slots 3 and 4 support future storage cartridges or modules. Each of these slots supports two SAS/SATA interfaces. Slot 8 supports a future PCIe adapter. The function is limited only by the form factor of the cartridge.

The rear of the chassis supports 4 SSDs that are connected to an internal removable RAID controller. The storage complex is distributed to the pluggable cartridges in a virtualized way provided by a custom ASIC and driver firmware. In addition there is one half-width/half-height PCI slot for possible future use.
Network I/O is provided by two 40-Gbps QSFP ports that aggregate all cartridge I/O as well as all management traffic. An upstream VN TAG capable top of rack switch is required for the total solution.